TL;DR
This study combines theoretical analysis and N-body simulations to determine that the Sun likely left its birth cluster within 20 million years after forming the giant planets, based on the current structure of the Oort cloud.
Contribution
It provides new constraints on the timing of the Sun's departure from its birth cluster using the mass and orbital distribution of the Oort cloud.
Findings
The Sun left its birth cluster within ~20 Myr after giant planet formation.
The current Oort cloud mass supports early ejection from the cluster.
Signatures of cluster environment are still observable in the outer Solar system.
Abstract
The Sun was born in a clustered environment with 10,000 other stars. Being an isolated star today, the Sun must have left the nest. We do not directly know when that happened, how violent the ejection was, or how far the Solar siblings have drifted apart. The mass of the fragile outer Opic-Oort cloud, (between \,au and au from the Sun) and the orbital distribution of planetesimals in the inner Hills-Oort cloud (between \,au and au) are sensitive to the dynamical processes involving the Sun in the parent cluster. We aim at understanding the extend to which observing the Oort cloud constrains the Sun's birth environment. This is achieved by a combination of theoretical arguments and N-body simulations. We show that the current mass of the Opic-Oort cloud (between 0.2 and Earth masses) is best explained if the Sun left…
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